They went. But as they were leaving, each one of them looked at him ominously, and Lida muttered under her breath:

“We’ll come back!”

As for Aksinya, she threatened him with her fist, shouting at him:

“Oo, you devil! So you’re crippled? Serves you right.…”

Such daring astounded the girls very much.

Downstairs they were seized with an ecstasy of malice, a vengeful ecstasy, the sharp sweetness of which they had never before experienced. Mad with joy, they jeered at Vaska, scaring the proprietress by their violent mood and even infecting her with it to a degree.

She too was glad to see Red punished by fate. She too resented him, for he treated her not as an employer, but as though she were the subordinate and he the superior. But she knew that without him she could not keep the girls in hand, and she expressed her real feeling about Vaska cautiously.

The doctor came, bandaged up the patient, prescribed medicines, and went away, telling the proprietress that it would be better to send Vaska to a hospital.

“Well, girls, shall we pay a visit to our darling patient?” cried Lida in a dare-devil tone.

And they all dashed upstairs with laughter and shrieks.

Vaska lay with closed eyes. Without opening them, he said:

“You have come back.…”

“Aren’t we sorry for you, Vasily Mironych!…”

“Don’t we just love you!…”

“Remember how you…?”

They spoke quietly but impressively, and standing around his bed they looked at his gray face with malicious and joyful eyes. He too looked at them, and never before had his eyes expressed so much unsatisfied, insatiable hunger, the incomprehensible hunger which always burned in them.

“Girls…look out! I’ll get up.…”

“And, maybe, please God, you won’t get up…” Lida interrupted him.

Vaska compressed his lips tightly and held his peace.

“Which little leg hurts you, darling?” asked one girl tenderly, bending over him. Her face was pale and her teeth showed. “Is it this one?”

And seizing Vaska by his injured leg, she pulled it hard towards her.

Vaska gritted his teeth and howled. His left arm, too, was hurt, he swung his right, and wishing to strike the girl, slapped his own stomach.

A roar of laughter resounded about him.

“Huzzies!” he shouted, rolling his eyes frightfully. “Look out, I’ll murder you!”